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Let me tell you an old joke, the kind of humor that might have resonated with my immigrant grandparents: “A Jewish mother is with her son at the beach after he recently passed his medical licensing exams. He goes for a swim, but suddenly gets pulled under a large wave. Trying to get assistance, she shouts, ‘Help, help! My son the doctor is drowning!’”

That is a fitting allegory for the experience of young doctors today, who are publicly applauded for their professional skills and accomplishments, but continue, metaphorically speaking, to drown.

In ideal circumstances, a doctor’s professional identity centers around not only using one’s knowledge of medicine to educate and help individuals who are suffering from illnesses, but also exercising compassion and earning respect through competence, ingenuity, and fortitude. However, the unfortunate reality is that modern medicine is practiced within an increasingly inefficient, dysfunctional, and bureaucratic health care system that limits our ability to live up to this standard. In other words, the problem we are facing in residency is that medicine has changed, but medical training has not.

Facing the Alarming, Blunt Facts About Burnout and Stress

I was actually warned about the growing mental health crisis among doctors in training 3 years ago on my first day of hospital orientation when the director of our house staff mental health service told us the facts bluntly. About 

 would develop burnout during our residency training, and a quarter would develop clinical depression, a rate that has been estimated by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to be 3 to 4 times that of similarly aged peers in other professions.

 Because many of us would be repeatedly exposed to medical emergencies and traumatic stress, we would be more likely to develop 

 Most alarming, we would be at increased risk of suicide. One study from 

 found that 23% of first-year residents had had suicidal thoughts during the previous year.

 Suicide is the second leading cause of death among residents, and the leading cause among male residents.

These are not mere statistics. I have completed my final year of residency training in psychiatry, and every year since that orientation lecture, in what has become a disturbingly routine ritual, I have gathered informally with my department after learning of a colleague’s suicide.

Residency: Training Program or Hazing Ritual?

It is impossible to discuss the current burnout and mental health crisis among residents without considering the historically demanding nature of residency training. Equal parts training program and hazing ritual, residency is a modern, systematized form of apprenticeship; it is a rite of passage that initiates young doctors into the practice of medicine. Formal residency programs have been in place in the United States for more than 100 years, and their central guiding principles have remained much the same. In exchange for training and education, we provide inexpensive labor for hospitals. We work most of our waking hours and are paid only about $12 an hour for an 80-hour week, even though nearly half of us owe more than $200,000 in educational debt.

There have been important regulations put in place to improve residents’ working conditions, mostly as a result of patient tragedies. An example is the death of Libby Zion in 1984, which led to the passage of a 1989 New York State law restricting resident work hours to 80 hours per week. Unfortunately, the recommendations were not adopted nationwide until 2003. Meanwhile, in 2017, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which oversees residency training, raised the maximum number of hours an intern can work consecutively from 16 to 24. Unsurprisingly, many of these protections have been difficult to maintain in recent months. Residents have been asked to take on the lion’s share of additional work, often in capacities outside their area of training and specialization, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

More senior doctors will rightfully point out that residency training has always been demanding and, in some ways, exploitative. But even if overwork contributes to resident burnout, depression, and suicide, it cannot explain why the problem seems to be growing. In recent years, numerous academic studies have sought to characterize the problem of burnout more specifically, investigating risk factors, rates across medical specialties, and its 

 Medicine is not the only profession that involves rigorous training, long hours, and a stressful work environment. Moreover, we enter residency with foreknowledge of its difficulty and having already demonstrated the ability and dedication to endure it. In fact, physicians actually score higher on resilience scales than individuals in other professions, suggesting that physician burnout occurs in spite of the 

 My sense is that the current resident burnout is not merely one caused by overwork and insufficient attention on resident wellness, although these undoubtedly contribute, but rather due to a professional identity crisis.

Time Constraints and Patient-Doctor Interactions

Even before the coronavirus pandemic began, today’s hospitals were vastly different from the ones our teachers and mentors staffed when they were residents a generation ago. With improved medical knowledge and treatment over the last half-century, patients now can receive care in ambulatory (and even virtual) settings and survive conditions that would have likely been lethal a few decades ago. As a result, residency training, which remains predominantly hospital-based, involves caring for ever-sicker and more complex patients. The number of 

, for example, has doubled in the last 3 decades, as has the number of intensive care unit beds, even as the number of hospitals has decreased across the country.

 Sicker patients have more medical emergencies, and over the last 10 years, the rates of cardiac arrest in hospitalized adult patients has increased by more than 20%.

 Due to a combination of improved treatment and increased pressure to reduce health care costs, today’s patients spend roughly half as many days in the hospital per admission compared with those in the 1970s.

 As a result, in addition to managing more complicated and stressful clinical situations, residents contend with more rapid patient turnover and increased administrative burden than ever before.

Young doctors may have entered medicine to tend compassionately to patients, but they end up with woefully insufficient time to spend with those in their care. Contrary to the popular image of the young, white-coated physician intently examining a patient with a stethoscope, residents actually spend most of their time in cramped workrooms managing patients’ care from behind a computer. In recent studies at Stanford University and Columbia University, residents in their first 2 years of training spent almost half their working hours at computers, using the electronic medical record to gather information and write notes; less than 10% of their day was spent with patients.

 As an intern working in internal medicine, the 5 to 10 minutes a day I spent with each patient was sometimes more time than the more senior residents on my team had—they did not always have time to even meet the patients.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated this trend by forcing residents to minimize all face-to-face interactions with patients, pressing time constraints required residents to spend only enough time with patients to obtain necessary information, a dissatisfying experience for doctor and patient alike. We also save time by talking about patients primarily in terms of their basic demographics, diagnoses, and test results—a dehumanizing characterization that can make it difficult to see patients as actual individuals. The breakdown of the doctor-patient relationship presents an existential threat to resident professional identity, especially now, when patient interactions occur behind the impersonal veil of fogged face shields and voice-muffling N95 masks. If we are unable to spend meaningful time with patients, we are not learning to function as doctors, but merely as technicians for the human body.

While the combination of punishingly long work hours and limited time with patients may be demoralizing for residents, it is potentially disastrous for patients. My colleagues acknowledge that, as a result of feeling overwhelmed, they have made mistakes that have impacted patient care and wasted resources, such as requesting redundant laboratory tests, requiring an additional blood draw, or accidentally ordering an expensive imaging study on the wrong patient. When I did night shifts as an intern, I cared for up to 40 sick patients each night and was exhausted—sometimes somewhat delirious from sleep deprivation—and focused on trying to keep track of which emergency I needed to respond to first. Occasionally I would be notified of a patient’s request for pain medication, and despite my best efforts, would sometimes be too busy to respond promptly, or worse, might even forget. Experiences like these are not tracked by the ACGME when looking for links between resident exhaustion and clinical errors, as any resident will shrug and tell you that “it happens every day.” But ask anyone who has been a patient in a hospital, and they will tell you about a time they suffered while waiting for the help of a doctor whom they did not even know.

Addressing the Social Safety Net, Without a Net

Another way in which hospitals have changed is that they increasingly care for the most 

 in our society, those who cannot receive assistance anywhere else.

 Residents must not only treat the immediate medical problem at hand but, very often, also address the social determinants of patient health, including poverty, violence, exposure to the criminal justice system, systemic racism, illiteracy, immigration trauma, and homelessness. We enter residency training to become doctors, but we are asked to function as part of the social safety net, an impossible task that often leaves us feeling helpless, exhausted, and overextended.

I had this very experience when I spent a month working on an inpatient HIV service. Although patients with HIV can lead healthy lives thanks to antiretrovirals, the patients in this unit were gravely ill with severe complications, primarily because their lives were too unstable and chaotic to stay regularly engaged in treatment. Despite no formal training in social work, we spent hours each day in interdisciplinary meetings strategizing the provision of services to support patient well-being, like housing, nursing services, financial support, and psychological counseling. These patients needed assistance in almost every aspect of their lives, far more than we could accomplish during their short hospital stay.

In extreme cases known informally as “social admissions,” patients are hospitalized because they cannot be safely discharged due to the absence of sufficient support or care at home—not because of medical necessity. Throughout residency, I have encountered patients on nearly every hospital service who have remained hospitalized for months, even years, without an acute medical issue, simply because they were awaiting a safe discharge plan. I dreaded waking these patients on my early morning rounds, ashamed of how little we could do on their behalf and frustrated by how seemingly irrelevant my medical training was to their care.

Medical Records and Bureaucratic Nightmares

Another dispiriting change in residency is a result of health care systems’ goals to become more efficient and standardized. As a result, residents are often constrained by hospital bureaucracy. A close friend of mine training in neurosurgery routinely works 100-hour work weeks caring for critically ill and dying patients. The worst part of residency, he shares, is the round-the-clock nonurgent patient updates, nonclinical requests, and digital notifications, often triggered automatically by electronic record systems. Every resident knows what it is like to be startled awake in the middle of the night by seemingly pointless notifications, like a slightly higher than normal blood pressure reading, or a request to renew a routine order that has been in place for days. I was once sent an urgent notification to change the order for a patient’s protein drink from chocolate to vanilla. My friend explains, “Someone on the outside might think [these middle-of-the-night notifications are just] annoying and not a big deal, but multiply over years and countless hours of lost sleep…[and] it’s like psychological torture.”

Changes in modern medicine that burden house staff continue to affect doctors when they become attending physicians. In fact, attending physicians and residents have similarly alarming rates of depression and suicide,

 and this problem may be even more challenging to address since attendings are not under centralized oversight as residents are in training programs. While addressing the deeper systemic issues in American health care that undermine physician professional identity will ultimately require a radical reevaluation and overhaul of the American medical system, there is good news: Medical schools, residency programs, and hospitals can still take steps now to help residents by cultivating and preserving their emerging sense of professional identity. The first priority should be to protect residents’ time with patients, whether virtually or in person. Interpersonal skills are critical for fostering effective doctor-patient interactions and should be prioritized in training alongside other technical skills. Just as hospital-based residents spend the early part of their day in rounds that provide time for teaching and discussion, residents should have time built into the later part of their day to spend time with patients, reassessing their needs, providing education, and getting to know them as individuals. I kept sane in my intern year despite the 70- to 90-hour workweeks by managing to find a half hour at the end of the day to circle back to a patient. I would sit at their bedside, so they could introduce me to their spouse or show me a cherished picture of a vacation or wedding. Hospitals can be difficult places to feel human, both as a patient and as a doctor, and moments like these helped me feel like the work I was doing mattered.

Residents also need protected time with each other. Residency is life-changing in a way friends and family may not fully understand, and residents need time to process their experience with their colleagues and consolidate their emerging professional identity. Ideally, to facilitate trust and honest disclosure, such process groups should be small, consistent, and run on a weekly basis without the involvement of program administration or leadership. Furthermore, if a resident does need additional mental health treatment, hospitals should ensure that they have protected time for such. It is not sufficient or reasonable to simply refer residents to external mental health resources and ask them to address their mental well-being on their own time.

Young doctors need to be educated during medical school and residency about health care and social systems, so as to better function within an interdisciplinary health care team. Just as medical students learn about anatomy and physiology, they also need basic information about hospital payment structures, insurance reimbursement, and social systems such as public housing, homeless shelters, criminal justice, child protective services, and geriatric long-term care. Without an understanding of how their work fits into a broader social and health system, residents cannot advocate on their patients’ behalf. Similarly, residents’ day-to-day experience should facilitate direct and close collaboration with nonphysician team members, including nurses, social workers, and case managers.

Finally, doctors in training should be spending as much of their time as possible being doctors. Using residents as underpaid labor to perform tasks better suited to administrators, nurses, social workers, and other members of the health care team is not only inefficient, but it interferes with resident training and devalues their professional identity. Hiring additional staff would require additional hospital spending, but it would dramatically improve productivity and well-being.

Unfortunately, residents are not in a strong position to promote these changes themselves, especially changes that would involve reducing resident workloads. Hospitals have little incentive to make the financial commitment necessary to improve resident work conditions, especially since they have been primarily paying for resident salaries since the 1960s with set funds from Medicare and Medicaid. Moreover, overworked residents do not have time to organize and advocate for necessary reforms, nor do they have sufficient bargaining power to do so, as they are dependent on their residency programs for their future careers in medicine. Unsurprisingly, although residents have the legal right to unionize, only about 10% of them do so. However, residents are not the only individuals negatively impacted by the current burnout crisis. Patients also deserve higher quality and more personalized care from the residents who treat them. They, too, can lobby for increased access to their doctors by advocating for changes in how residencies are funded and structured.

Even with these changes, residency will still be demanding and difficult, just as it has been since its inception. To navigate and build expertise in dealing with high-stakes, emotionally intense situations—situations that are intrinsic to the practice of medicine—it is necessary to see large numbers of patients. Neither I nor my colleagues are looking to do less work, but we want to be allowed to direct our efforts in service of our professional mission: to become the physicians we envisioned when we started this transformative journey.

graduated from the psychiatry residency program at Columbia University Medical Center in June 2021.

She is a research fellow at Columbia University's Zukerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.

Prevalence of depression and depressive symptoms among resident physicians: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

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Work related post traumatic stress disorder in medicine residents.

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PTSD and surgical residents: everybody hurts… sometimes.

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Resilience and burnout among physicians and the general US working population.

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A former resident's reflection on burnout, physician PTSD, and their consequences for patient care. 

A Generation in Crisis?

 is a perplexing question with elusive answers. Because it is impossible to ask the individual who died, those left behind may never find solace or closure. Instead, they may torture themselves with feelings of confusion, anger, guilt, and sadness, wondering what, if anything, they could have done to prevent the death.

In their search for answers, family members may turn to the psychiatrist or therapist who treated their loved ones before their untimely death. In some cases, family members may lash out and even blame clinicians for not doing more. Yet, this is an important part of our job, one that requires some reflection and preparation.

Losing a patient to suicide is an occupational hazard that can be particularly painful for a psychiatrist. For many, it is not a matter of if a patient will commit suicide, but when; 51% of psychiatrists have experienced the loss of a patient to suicide, and this can create significant disruptions in their professional and personal lives.

 True grieving for a clinician often comes only after the family has been consoled and the institutional procedures have been completed. Even then, it can be hard to process.

 are as unique as the patients who commit the act. But promising research is shedding light on what makes some individuals feel that death is the only solution to the overwhelming emotional pain they feel.

 in the United States. Between 1999 and 2019, suicide rates increased 33%, making it the 10th leading cause of death. In 2019, there were 47,500 suicides in the United States, or roughly 1 death every 11 minutes. About 12 million American adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.5 million planned a suicide attempt, and 1.4 million attempted suicide.

Suicide affects all ages, races, and ethnicities. In the US, it is the second-leading cause of death for individuals aged 10 to 34, the fourth leading cause among 34- to 54-year-olds, and the fifth leading cause for ages 45 to 54.

 Those who commit suicide are more likely to be older and male, have an 

, comorbid health problems, severe suicide ideation, and familiarity with highly lethal methods.

American Indian/Alaska Natives and non-Hispanic Whites have the highest rates of suicide deaths, along with veterans, those living in rural areas, and workers in industries such as mining and construction. Young individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender are more likely to experience suicidal ideation and behavior than their peers.

Researchers have long speculated about the steps that lead someone to 

, and there are a number of theories that seek to explain the process. In his 1990 article, social psychologist Roy Baumeister, PhD, described suicide as a chain of events designed to “escape from aversive self-awareness.” According to Baumeister, the path to suicide begins when events fall grossly short of one’s expectations. Self-blame for these events quickly follows, along with an almost painful sense of self-awareness and self-loathing.

 This creates a negative feeling so powerful that an individual will do anything to avoid it. It may drive them to a state of cognitive deconstruction, generally characterized by concrete thinking, cognitive rigidity, and a rejection of meaning. Pushing aside any meaningful self-awareness and emotion, a person can become irrational and disinhibited. Anything is possible, and suicide is seen as a natural step to escape one’s self and the pain they are feeling.

, Thomas Joiner, PhD, identifies 2 contributing factors that comprise the suicidal mind. First, a person who is suicidal believes they are a burden to others, a perception often clouded by feelings of depression and anxiety. Second, they experience a sense of “thwarted belongingness,” expressed by withdrawing from social ties. This could include the loss of family, friends, and colleagues, whether through death, divorce, separation, or conflict.

What pushes these factors toward suicide is the acquired capacity to follow through on the desire. Marked by a fearless attitude toward death, there are 3 factors that can lead to acquired capacity.

First, acquired capacity can come from a tendency towards natural risk-taking, such as those in law enforcement, thrill-seekers, or emergency department doctors. Second, acquired capacity can also be learned, often through 

, such as exposure to violence, abuse, life-threatening situations, repeated suicide attempts, injuries, and illness. The third involves how knowledgeable and comfortable an individual is with the lethal means to kill themselves, such as knowing how to fire a gun.

None of these factors on their own means someone will commit suicide. Rather, if they ever had the desire to do so, their lack of fear of death and pain gives them the ability to overcome any hesitation. Individuals who are severely suicidal may sometimes lack the ability to understand how their death might impact family and friends. One study observed older adults who had previously attempted suicide expressed a blunted response to empathy scenarios.

For a closer look on warning signs, risk factors, and protective factors of suicide, see 

Evidence From Suicide Notes and Brain Imaging

Notes left behind can provide insight into the mind of an individual before they commit suicide. One study examined a collection of suicide notes in an effort to identify and create prevention strategies. Of the notes, 74% expressed apologies or shame, 60% expressed love “for those left behind,” 48% shared that life was “too much to bear,” 36% provided instructions on how to handle postmortem affairs, and 21% respectively described “hopelessness/nothing to live for” and dispensed advice for others left behind.

In a 2017 study, Yale University researchers studied the brains of 

, aged 14 to 25, to try and determine who would be more likely to follow through on suicidal thoughts. While the sample size was small, 26 had bipolar disorder and had previously attempted suicide, 42 had bipolar but had not attempted suicide, and 45 had no diagnosis of a mental illness, nor had they attempted suicide.

 Researchers used a specialized machine to combine 3 imaging techniques—structural and functional MRIs and diffusion tensor imaging—in 1 sitting, a first for this kind of research.

They discovered 3 indicators linked to suicidal behavior. First, the connective wiring, or white matter, in the areas of the brain that regulate emotion was decreased in those who had attempted suicide. Second, they noticed less gray matter in the frontal-limbic system and frontal cortex. And third, by studying real-time blood flow between different areas of the brain, researchers noticed less connectivity between the limbic amygdala and the frontal cortex.

Understanding how suicide looks on the inside is vital to our understanding of the mind considering suicide and can inform valuable treatment methods. Studying commonalities among victims of suicide is another way to discover ways to provide intervention and support. For more on ways to support someone considering suicide, see 

There are more suicide attempts on New Year’s Day than on any other holiday during the year. Sundays and Mondays are the most common days for adults to attempt suicide, while Mondays and Tuesdays tend to be favored by those under age 19.

 These are just some of the trends that influence suicide rates.

Spring and summer are likely to have the highest number of incidences compared to the winter season.

 One theory explains this by pointing out that symptoms of depression tend to worsen during wintertime. Feelings of listlessness may deflate any interest in forming a plan for suicide. Springtime, on the other hand, can act as an energizing motivator. Another theory suggests that the arrival of spring is regarded with the expectation that gloomy feelings during winter may dissipate. If this does not occur, someone may give up all hope and turn to suicide.

Suicides tend to be contagious. In 1774, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe launched his career with the publication of the novel, 

. In the story, Werther kills himself with a pistol in an act of unrequited love. The book became so popular that young men around Europe started dressing like the main character and killing themselves in a similar fashion. Government officials sought to have the book banned. Thus began the phenomenon of copycat suicides, also referred to as the Werther Effect.

Copycat suicides, or clusters, can occur after a famous person or celebrity kills themself. The media—and their portrayal of the death—usually get blamed for copycat suicides, and it is why many publications have policies on how suicides are reported.

Copycat suicides are a particular problem in South Korea. Since 2003, the country has had one of the highest suicide rates, and suicide is the leading cause of death among young adults. Just a day after a famous suicide is reported, suicides in the area tend to increase by 16.4%. After popular Korean actress Choi Jin-sil committed suicide in 2008, suicides in the country increased by 162.3% in the 3 weeks thereafter. News of Choi’s suicide dominated the media during this time. South Korea’s top 3 newspapers published 905 articles about her death in just 3 weeks, complete with graphic details and photos of the scene.

Copycat suicides are not always linked to real events. Similar to Goethe’s fictional story, the television series 

 among adolescents 3 months after the show’s release date. In the show, a series of audiotapes describe the role various individuals played in the suicide death of one of the characters. Suicide prevention organizations were quick to criticize the show for not portraying suicide in a socially responsible way.

Austria provides an example of a country that has taken steps to curb the Werther Effect and reduce the number of suicides and suicide attempts in the subway systems of Vienna. In 1987, the country launched a suicide-preventive experiment and issued guidelines on how the media can responsibly report suicide. Within 6 months, the number of suicides and attempts dropped by more than 80%.

The World Health Organization has released guidelines for the media when reporting on suicides. These include suggestions to avoid prominent placement and undue repetition of stories about suicide, avoid detailed information about the site and method involved, and caution in using photos and video footage.

While copycat suicides can be an alarming trend, there is another phenomenon that can affect suicide rates, thankfully, in a positive way. Known as the 

, suicide rates tend to dip after major events that are shared by large groups. It helps to explain why there are fewer suicides on Super Bowl Sundays, when groups of family and friends gather for a shared purpose. It is a powerful example of how the feeling of belonging and connectedness can be strong enough to stave off suicide.

 The most recent example of this was in 2020 when the world was gripped by the 

. Provisional suicide mortality rates dipped by 5.6% compared to 2019.

 This experience was similar to the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks when suicide rates in New York declined “significantly” for 180 days after the event.

This connection to others is a powerful tool that psychiatrists can use to discourage patients from suicide. But we need to understand that ultimately, the decision to end one’s life belongs solely to the patient. Our job as psychiatrists is to help patients recover to the best of our abilities. Even if we do everything right, we may still lose our patients to suicide. And if we are not prepared to fully accept this, true healing can elude the best of us.

After a patient’s suicide, 65% of psychiatrists reported stress levels on par with those who seek treatment after a parent dies. Younger, less-experienced clinicians were less prepared to deal with the effects than older, more experienced clinicians.

While all psychiatrists receive training on prevention and intervention, there is less discussion of how a clinician might react should a patient commit suicide. In the aftermath of a suicide, attention to self-care often falls by the wayside, which can lead to chronic problems related to stress, anxiety, anger, and depletion.

 Clinicians are often overwhelmed with other duties, such as speaking with the patient’s family to provide comfort and answers. They have to manage institutional inquiry procedures and engage in various risk management-driven procedures. There are many questions to consider: Should you reach out to family? How can you communicate tactfully? Should you attend the memorial service or funeral? Are you worried about a lawsuit? What will your colleagues think of you?

For some clinicians, there is a process of grieving that takes more time than they, or their colleagues, anticipate. Some professionals have symptoms similar to posttraumatic stress disorder, including flashbacks, survivor guilt, and nightmares about losing the patient. Other clinician reactions can include shock, disbelief, a feeling of numbness; guilt about not doing enough; reviewing notes to see what they missed; professional humiliation; doubt in one’s skills as a doctor; a sense of defeat; feelings of fear, anger, or sadness; and crying spells that can occur days, months, and even years afterward, often catching them off guard.

To help counterbalance these effects, psychiatrists and the organizations they work for can take the following measures:

1. Establish a protocol on how to respond to a patient’s suicide. This involves understanding the code of ethics, malpractice requirements, and documentation policies. Support staff should be trained on what to expect when a family calls and how to respond.

2. Offer to meet with the family. Remember that your role is to provide support. Offer your condolences and be receptive to their questions and concerns without compromising patient confidentiality. Seek legal counseling on this if needed. Offer a judgment-free space for family members to express themselves. Avoid seeking solace for your own suffering, do not share personal information that might be a burden to others, or speculate why a patient killed themselves. Avoid feeling defensive or judgmental. Be prepared in case the family gets hostile, angry, or blames you for the death of their family member.

3. Meet with your supervisor or mentor, if you have one, to process difficult feelings and sense of trauma.

4. Provide adequate support and guidance for any other affected doctors. Set a tone of support rather than blame among colleagues and supervisors; even the perception of stigma can be quite overwhelming for a clinician. Offer them time off for a reasonable period to recuperate from the loss.

Ultimately, suicide is an act rooted in loneliness and despair. The most powerful tools we have to counteract these feelings are connection with others and the ability to process our experiences in a healthy way. That is when the journey of true healing can begin. Acknowledging that someone needs help is the first step.

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Explaining the suicidal mind and helping to provide closure to family/friends left behind is no small feat. 

Exploring Thoughts and Feelings Inside a Suicidal Mind

Approximately, 775,000 US Armed Services members served at least 1 deployment in Afghanistan; a new survey of 1250 of these 

 found that 70% of them have struggled with their mental health since serving in Afghanistan.

“Trauma can alter how people think about themselves, others, and the world,” said clinical counselor Danny Taylor, MA. “The current situation in Afghanistan is a painful reminder of the traumatic experiences service members may have had in Afghanistan. This can lead to ideas that nothing is safe, and no one can be trusted.”

According to the survey, 75% of Afghanistan 

 are experiencing new or worsening symptoms of depression, 74% have new or worsening outbursts of anger, 64% have new or worsening thoughts of suicide, and 58% have started or increased drug and/or alcohol use.

Additionally, a third of veterans with a history of mental illness have started seeing a mental health professional since the Taliban retook Afghanistan in mid-August.

Holly Schiff, PsyD, believes the decline in veteran mental health may be triggered by feelings of powerlessness or fear about the situation in Afghanistan: “Veterans are usually looking for meaning and how the conflict ends definitely holds some significance. These individuals made enormous sacrifices and the fall of Afghanistan had them reflect on if everything they did was worth it. This can lead to feelings of depression and anger.”

The fall of Afghanistan may also be triggering new or worsening thoughts of suicide in 64% of veterans coping with mental illness. Researchers reported 32% are experiencing new thoughts of 

, while another 32% indicate their suicidal thoughts have grown worse in the past few weeks.

“I have absolutely seen an increase in patients who are veterans since the fall of Afghanistan,” Schiff said further. “This makes sense given the fact that this situation may trigger unresolved issues or past traumas that they now have to address and deal with all over again.”

“The fall of Afghanistan definitely triggered some mental health issues for Afghan vets, some of which will have potential long-term effects and consequences,” Schiff told 

. “For those veterans already struggling with posttraumatic stress disorder, the fall of Afghanistan brought back up some unresolved issues for them, past traumas and some unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and experiences. They now have to address these and almost re-process them for a second time.”

 is an endless war, but the current events just made it worse,” she added. “They may feel anxious, depressed, angry, helpless, frustrated, and sometimes even experience suicidal ideation. Longer-term, some of these veterans may feel like some old wounds were re-opened with this event and it will take them some time to recover and process the range of emotions that they are now feeling. In reaction to the events in Afghanistan, veterans may feel like they need to expect or prepare for the worst. This can have long-lasting impacts as it may alter their behavior and moving forward, they may become overly vigilant, guarded and become preoccupied by danger.”

To see more on Afghanistan’s impact on mental health, check out 

Psychiatrists Concerned With the Afghanistan Situation: Ethical and Practical Issues

Have ideas on how to best serve the veteran mental health community? Share with us 

1. Following Taliban takeover, 9 in 10 Afghanistan vets have exacerbated mental health symptoms. Online Therapy. Accessed September 8, 2021. 

https://www.onlinetherapy.com/taliban-takeover-exacerbates-vets-mental-health-symptoms/

A recent survey found 70% of Afghanistan veterans have struggled with their mental health since serving. 

Afghanistan Veterans Struggling With Mental Health

September is National Suicide Prevention Month. Here are a couple phone numbers that might be helpful in preventing these tragedies.  

Other resources for immediate response can be found here: 

Continue the conversation with us in helping to prevent suicide on Twitter: 

Phone Numbers to Know for National Suicide Prevention Month

Suicide rates among American youth have been on the rise over the past 15 years, and suicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers. Prevention is vital, but what approaches have the best evidence of efficacy?

In this Mental Health Minute, Nakela L. Cook, MD, MPH, discusses 5 studies funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. The largest assesses the effectiveness of 

, while others will look at the unique challenges facing autistic youth, Alaskan natives, and sexual and gender diverse young adults.

is the executive director at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

What suicide prevention programs have the best evidence for efficacy? 

5 Studies Aimed at Reducing Suicide Among Teens

Falling, being struck by equipment or debris, suffering electrocution—all of these are hazards often associated with workplace deaths in US construction. But according to a recent study, the potential killer we should be taking note of is suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 

men working in construction have one of the highest suicide rates

 compared to other industries, a rate about 4 times higher than the general population.

In response, the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has formed a task force of industry partners, unions, and educators to raise awareness about construction worker depression and suicide.

The task force is calling for participation in a weeklong Suicide Prevention Safety Stand-Down event from September 6-10, hoping to illuminate the unique challenges construction workers face. The event coincides with 

“Work-related stress can have severe impacts on mental health and without proper support may lead to substance abuse and even suicide,” said Jim Frederick, Acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. “Workers in construction face many work-related stressors that may increase their risk factors for suicide, such as the uncertainty of seasonal work, demanding schedules and workplace injuries that are sometimes treated with opioids.”

More than 5000 people participated in the 2020 Suicide Prevention Safety Stand-Down. OSHA hopes more will join the effort in 2021.

“Like many workplace fatalities, suicides can be prevented,” said Billie Kizer, OSHA Acting Regional Administrator. “We encourage employers to use all available resources, familiarize themselves with the problem and learn to recognize the warning signs of depression. We also urge workers to seek help if they feel overwhelmed or overcome by a loss of hope.”

1. McCleery T, Earnest S, Socias-Morales C, Garza E. Partnering to prevent suicide in the construction industry – building hope and a road to recovery. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. September 9, 2020. Accessed August 27, 2021. 

https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2020/09/09/suicide-in-construction/

2. US Department of Labor. US Department of Labor, industry leaders, stakeholders call on employers, workers to combat surge in construction worker suicides. August 24, 2021. Accessed August 27, 2021. 

https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osha/osha20210824

According to the CDC, construction workers commit suicide 4 times more than the general population. What can be done to stem this hazard? 

Suicide

A Generation in Crisis?

Exploring Thoughts and Feelings Inside a Suicidal Mind

Afghanistan Veterans Struggling With Mental Health

Phone Numbers to Know for National Suicide Prevention Month

5 Studies Aimed at Reducing Suicide Among Teens

Suicide: The Lesser-Known Hazard for Construction Workers

In the Wake of 9/11: Mental Health Statistics of First Responders

Let’s Ask the Right Questions About Medical Aid in Dying

The Meaning of Compassion

A Psychiatrist’s Personal Perspective on Medical Aid in Dying